


Remember Me, Love, When I Am Reborn

by wispenwillows



Category: Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: F/M, i love to yearn!!!, ugh i love to pine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22263625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wispenwillows/pseuds/wispenwillows
Summary: Laurie goes to London to lick his wounds, waiting for news of an engagement that never comes. Short drabble because I’ve been waiting since I was 8 for Amy/Laurie Content.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Amy March
Comments: 11
Kudos: 295





	Remember Me, Love, When I Am Reborn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkonapage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkonapage/gifts).



> a mix of book and 2019 canon, though mostly book canon  
> (he’s supposed to be in paris and she’s in nice, but i wanted them both in italy)

He pours cold milk into his warm coffee and imagines hearing news that Amy March is engaged to Fred Vaughn. Surely it will come any day now, in a cream envelope tied in baby blue ribbon, with his name written in her neat hand: _Theodore Laurence._ And then, inside:  _répondez s'il vous plaît_ ,  because her French has been coming along beautifully since she’s come to Europe. And they will make a fine match, Amy and Fred, their fair hair shining under the sun as they walk through the gardens at Nice or in Vevey.

He wonders where they will go to honeymoon. Somewhere fashionable, perhaps—Venice, or Provence, though he knows Rome is more to Amy’s taste. He wonders if Fred Vaughn even has an eye for art. 

That’s uncharitable of him. Unbecoming, Amy would say, and she’s right, for Fred is a jovial chap, and kind, and good-natured—just not the kind of man he fancied she would marry. 

Yet when he asks himself about the kind of man who deserves to love Amy March, Theodore Laurence can provide no real answer. Dark hair, he imagines, and tall. But as to whether or not the anonymous man has hair darker than his own, Laurie cannot say, for he fears if this phantom grew a face, he would grow to hate it as he hates Fred Vaughn.

Perhaps it is not Fred Vaughn he hates.

_ I‘d be respected, if I could not be loved. _

_ I despise you. _

Laurie is tempted to leave London for Surrey, or head west perhaps, to Bath, where the Romans can cure him of this malaise. But he suspects it would follow him there and that, in this new age, where gossip spreads quicker than a forest catching flame, he would not be able to outrun the news he dreads daily. So he throws himself into his work instead.

Late in June his grandfather sends him to Rome under the pretense of business, but Laurie suspects it‘s because he’s been looking sickly, and picking at his food. The latter is certainly true—the cuisine d’Anglais is not well-known for its nourishing properties—but he does not pass up an opportunity to go to Italy, for he’s had news that the Carrolls and their young charge have relocated to Firenze, his mother’s city. He conjures for himself the image of a young couple, a girl dressed in blue and her suitor in a grey suit, with hair too fair to be satisfactorily dark and too dark to be discomfortingly fair. They walk along the shores of the River Arno, crossing medieval bridges that have seen their share of lovers, and Laurie amuses himself with the notion that Fred would not have vocabulary enough to declare love beside eternal waters, and that Amy has more sense than to accept a tepid proposal on a scorching summer night.

Still, he can’t be sure. 

He writes a careful letter telling her of his arrival. He does not mention Fred Vaughn, though he does make sure to mention that his purpose in Italy is business, not pleasure, and hopes that she can feel her effect on him. Would she like a plaster model of the Basilica, he asks, and smiles, because she once gifted him a plaster model of something much more singular. 

Amy’s letter to him arrives one week later, a cream coloured envelope wrapped in blue ribbon and postmarked from Siena, where she writes excitedly about standing in the piazza and watching the races with Flo. She includes sketches—one of Aunt Carroll, a caricature of scandalised horror that makes him laugh until he can’t breathe, and one of a spirited horse and its rider, so visceral it sobers him up immediately, for it reminds him of another sketch she’d shown him under another set of circumstances. Fred has gone, she says, to Egypt. The sentence is diligently worded, and restrained, but he knows her well enough to smile and say, without much meaning it, “Poor old fellow!” He knows how it feels, but can’t quite say he’s sorry. 


End file.
